Chronic overfishing has depleted numerous elasmobranch stocks in the North East Atlantic, but addressing this issue has been hampered by management complications and lacking data. Spatial management approaches have thus been advocated. This work presents a novel application and further development of an advanced spatial modeling technique to identify candidate nursery grounds and spawning areas...

True crabs (Brachyura) are the most successful group of decapod crustaceans. This success is most likely coupled to their life history, including two specialised larval forms, zoea and megalopa. The group is comparably young, starting to diversify only about 100 million years ago (mya), with a dramatic increase in species richness beginning approximately 50 mya. Early evolution of crabs is stil...

A new species of fiddler crab (Brachyura: Ocypodidae), Uca boninensis sp. nov., is described from the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands, Japan. The new species has previously been identified with the widely distributed U. crassipes (White, 1847), from which it differs by having a slightly differently shaped carapace, and relatively stouter male first gonopods (G1). The recognition of the new species is...

Rhinobatos percellens is one of three species of Rhinobatidae found on Brazilian shores and is one of the most abundant species on the shallow continental shelf of Paraná and Santa Catarina States. Specimens caught by artisanal fishery between July/2001 and March/2003 by fishing communities located on the frontier between two southern Brazilian States (Paraná and Santa Catarina) had their stoma...